Software that helps the phone

A group of engineers at the University of Rochester (USA) has launched a new computer program capable of assessing the emotions of users based on the variation of the voice. According to chief researcher Na Yang, this program is a form of smart phone application that displays a happy or sad face and is introduced at the 2012 International Electrical - Electronics Engineers Association (IEEE) Conference on verbal expression technology from 2 to 5 December.

Na Yang said the new technology could create an application for everything, from changing the color of the phone screen to adjusting the ringtone to match the user's mood. Accordingly, the application will analyze the voice recording based on 12 characteristics of the voice, including intensity and volume, to identify 6 different types of emotions such as "happy", "sad", "happy happiness "," fear "," angry "or" normal ". When active, the application will analyze the new voice recording of the user and try to classify the emotion it was programmed. If the program cannot distinguish between two or more emotions, it will mark the recording as "unclassified".

According to the researchers, the "reading" program reaches an accuracy of 81%, higher than the 55% of previous software. However, its limitation is that if the new voice is different from the pre-programmed voice, the accuracy will decrease to 30%. To overcome this problem, the research team said they may have to create many programs that are compatible with each group of people with the same age and gender.